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John Ramsey on news of grand jury's vote to indict: 'Just more drama'

JonBenet's father tells People magazine parents were prepared to be arrested

By Charlie Brennan Camera Staff Writer

Posted:
01/30/2013 06:10:23 PM MST

Updated:
01/30/2013 06:33:36 PM MST

Patsy Ramsey speaks as her husband John Ramsey listens during a news conference in Atlanta on Aug. 29, 2000. In a new interview with People magazine, John Ramsey dismissed as "just more drama" the Daily Camera's report that the Boulder County grand jury voted to indict the couple in 1999, but that then-DA Alex Hunter refused to prosecute. (Associated Press file photo)

In his first public remarks since the Daily Camera reported that a grand jury voted in 1999 to indict him and his wife for child abuse resulting in the death of his daughter JonBenet, John Ramsey was dismissive of the news in an interview with People magazine.

"It's just more drama," said Ramsey, 69, in the Feb. 11 edition, which appears on newsstands Friday.

The Camera reported exclusively on Sunday, based on interviews with grand jurors and other sources knowledgeable about the case, that the grand jury investigating the Christmas night 1996 death of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey voted to indict both of the girl's parents. The eight women and four men of the grand jury had heard evidence from September 1998 to October 1999.

Camera file photo

The Daily Camera has confirmed that the grand jury investigating the death of JonBenet Ramsey voted to indict John and Patsy Ramsey on charges of child abuse resulting in death but then-District Attorney Alex Hunter refused to sign the indictment and prosecute the case.

Sources told the Camera that then-Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter declined to sign the indictment and go forward with a prosecution, based on his determination that the evidence was not sufficient to prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.

Multiple requests by the Camera for comment from John Ramsey in the wake of Sunday's report, placed through his legal representatives, were not successful. People's article did not make clear whether Ramsey previously had been aware of the grand jury's vote to indict.

Ramsey told People that as the grand jury neared the conclusion of its duties in the case, he and his wife had feared the worst.

"Our attorneys had us totally prepared to go to jail," Ramsey told the magazine.

And, said Ramsey, "We had bail money set up."

Ramsey's few remarks to the magazine were not the first time he acknowledged that the couple once assumed their arrest was imminent.

In the book the couple wrote together and published in 2000, "The Death of Innocence," Ramsey wrote that on the morning of Oct. 13, 1999, the day Hunter announced there would be no charges, "We figured we would probably be arrested first and then the DA would make an announcement of the fact... Every once in a while the doorbell would ring, and we'd wonder if the Boulder police had arrived to take us away."

Ramsey also wrote in the couple's book that, "Patsy asked if she would be allowed to bring her favorite pillow with her to jail. She joked that the black-and-white stripes on her prison uniform would have to be vertical; horizontal stripes would make her look fat."

Patsy Ramsey died June 24, 2006, after a years-long battle with ovarian cancer, and is buried alongside JonBenet in Marietta, Ga.

John Ramsey remarried in July 2011. According to People, he and wife Jan Rousseaux split their time between Charlevoix, Mich., and Las Vegas.

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